Donnie Baseball: A Novel

When he was young, Donnie Wilson seemed like a sure thing, a can’t-miss prospect whose grace and talent on a baseball field inspired both awe and envy. However, a lengthy minor-league career brought only frustration and unfulfilled expectations. Now, years after his final game, Donnie works on the grounds crew at the local high school and coaches young players who often tune him out. When his wife dies unexpectedly, Donnie finds himself grappling with his old ghosts, including Stubs, his former best friend who surpassed him first on the diamond and then in the youth coaching game. Meanwhile, Donnie’s son Max, a promising teenage pitcher, has grown disillusioned with the past’s bitter hold on his father and pulls away from the man who was once his idol, searching for consolation in alcohol, girls, and a new obsession that keeps him feeling close to his late mother. Marked by its colorful cast of characters and compulsive immersion in baseball’s intricacies, Donnie Baseball is a novel about the headlong pursuit of greatness and the inevitability of forever falling short.

“Tom Gresham’s storytelling is confident and insightful. His characters—major and minor alike, but especially the irascible and prideful Donnie Wilson—grab you right away with their singularity and then touch you, very deeply, with their humanity.” — Tom De Haven, author of The Derby Dugan Trilogy and It’s Superman!

“Despite its title, Tom Gresham’s Donnie Baseball is not really about baseball at all. It’s about ambition, thwarted dreams, and the indestructibility of hope. Gresham’s lean prose is visceral and immediate, and I felt like I was there. You can keep the glossy MVPs and polished bestsellers; I’ll take the scuffed and sweat-stained Donnie Baseball over them any day.” — Kirk Kjeldsen, author of East and The Depths